I will be speaking today in Plenary, in Strasbourg, on the report on the EU’s Single Market penned by Conservative MEP Malcolm Harbour. This is what I plan to say:

Plenary Speech June 13th

Mr. President,

I should like to thank our rapporteur, my good friend Malcolm Harbour, for his meticulous work. But he falls in to an error common amongst British Conservatives.

Challenged to find even one good thing to say about the European Union, most British Conservatives will cite the Single Market. They seem to believe that it’s a Free Trade Area, and they like free trade. But it’s not. It’s a Customs Union, and it’s a bureaucratic nightmare of regulation and red tape.

Years ago, Commissioner Verheugen estimated the cost of EU regulation at around 6% of GDP. Since then, it’s got worse, and this proposal today adds more burdens.

Mr. President, colleagues, I come to the House today with good news. It is possible to create growth, and jobs, and prosperity, and investment, and recovery, in Europe.

But to do so, you will need to do four things:

First, cut taxes.

Second, have a bonfire of the regulations.

Third, dismantle the reckless and failing experiment of Monetary Union.

And finally, adopt a rational energy policy and abandon your lunatic obsession with the myth of Global Warming.

But I fear that you will do none of these things, and you will condemn Europe to a future of decline, poverty and unemployment.

The appalling statement by the vast glass building on a, presumably, man made lake says it all for me – and it is not even near Berlaymont.
Please don’t give in – we need you to keep on saying and saying and saying till you get a sore throat!

The worrying thing is that there is such an overwhelming number of politicians who amongst other negative attributes seem to be either delusional and incapable of understanding evidence and past experience, or arrogant and bad who seek a power grab out of creating crisis and poverty. In a word, socialism.
It must be frustrating for you as a common sense person having to deal with them.

How much has the EU budget increased, proportionate to inflation and growth, if any, since Verheugen said that in 2006? The seat of the pants calculation would be that multiplying that increase by the 5.5% Verheugen originally said would be the current amount of EU parasitism. Assuming that Verheugen, being an EU apparatchik, wasn’t downplaying the true level of parasitism in the first place.